There are many excellent reasons why Iran should not have access to nuclear weapons. It is a nation run by brutal, bloody-minded ayatollahs, supported by religious fanatics who would love nothing more than to kill as many Western infidels as possible. Despite a reportedly moderate segment of its population, these savages support those who strap explosives around their waists and blow themselves up in crowds of people who are minding their own business.
Having said that, I have heard various commentators question why they even need nuclear power. "They're sitting on an ocean of oil. The fact that they're working on nuclear power despite that just proves that their intention is making weapons."
Well, no, it proves nothing of the sort. In fact, they would be stupid to burn their petroleum reserves if another fuel source is available. Why? Because oil is the only export commodity they have that could bring foreign income. How many Persian rugs can they make? So, producing and selling oil abroad while developing nuclear power to provide domestic electricity production makes the kind of capitalistic sense that anyone in America should be able to understand.
In fact, there's a large number of Americans who advocate greatly increasing our own nuclear power production as a potential remedy to global warming. To say that Iran doesn't need nuclear power because of their huge oil reserves is a stupid statement.
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Comments: 41
He also says the Iranians are far, far from having uranium sufficiently enriched to worry about them being close to developing a nuclear bomb.
I don't see how the U.S. can expect other countries not to have nuclear arms when it hasn't complied with nuclear disarmament terms. Nor is it fair to question Iran's development of nuclear technology for nuclear power, as much as we fear their misuse of it. The U.S. needs to show some good faith and leadership and begin its own nuclear disarmament.
And that fact should open up an avenue for discussions to avoid the Bush/Cheney confrontation-leading-to-preemptive-war they seem to be pushing.
The only brutal bloody minded ayatollah I can think of is the one with which the CIA replaced their beloved Mossedegh in 1953. It was the overthrow of a democratically elected government and we even hired opposition Iranian terrorists to do the job.
I wish more people would familiarize themselves with Scott Ritter and get the real story on Iran. This demonizing propaganda for the sake of invading them is causing a lot of misery and people are lapping it up. Savages? There are extremist jihadists, yes. They aren't the ones who run the country. In fact, the ones who run the country are quite civilized, refined, intelligent and deserve far more respect than the cowboys in our administration are even capable of giving. Please see the underlying motive for making Iran out to be nothing but hooligans run amok. Even Ahmadinejad, mouthy as he is, doesn't run the country. Yes, the extremists yell death to America.....it all started in 1953..and then of course we aided Iraq in bombing them during a later war. I don't remember Iran ever bombing us. They have shown amazing grace in the face of all the pain we have caused them.
THAT is the real reason ... the entire US National Debt and economy depends upon the world continuing to buy and sell the world oil via the US $ ... Saddam would not, Chavez has not, and Iran is about to not ...
And that is only a part of many aspects that are playing out at the same time ... we all think we know something important about it all but in truth we know very little ...
Also note some history of Iran. Iran was a pal of Nazi Germany during the WWII, and after the war was a quasi-British colony in occupation, together with Russian influence. Later, when the prime minister at the time, started taking the country in a communist direction with Soviet help, the British (not the power they once were) sought help from the US in dumping him from power because most of their energy needs came from there at the time. Right, wrong or indifferent the British felt threatened economically and the US helped them out; it wasn't some CIA only out of the blue take-over as often portrayed...
1941 - The Shah's pro-Axis allegiance in World War II leads to the Anglo-Russian occupation of Iran and the deposition of the Shah in favour of his son, Mohammad Reza Pahlavi.
1950 - Ali Razmara becomes prime minister and is assassinated less than nine months later. He is succeeded by the nationalist, Mohammad Mossadeq.
1951 April - Parliament votes to nationalise the oil industry, which is dominated by the British-owned Anglo-Iranian Oil Company. Britain imposes an embargo and a blockade, halting oil exports and hitting the economy. A power struggle between the Shah and Mossadeq ensues and the Shah flees the country in August 1953.
1953 August - Mossadeq is overthrown in a coup engineered by the British and American intelligence services. General Fazlollah Zahedi is proclaimed as prime minister and the Shah returns.
http://nuclearenergy.gather.com/ and learn the reality of nuclear energy production.
As for Iran,
Nobody is trying to deny Iran a nuclear energy program just the ability to produce weapons grade nuclear material. They can have a nuclear energy program they just can't make weapons…..Israel will make sure of that!
Exactly the point!! As long as our leaders make such ignorant statements as "Iran has all that oil, it doesn't need nuclear power at all" and approach Iran on that basis, we are in deep doo-doo.
Recognizing Iran's legitimate, logical, economic reasons for developing nuclear power can lead to the kind of discussions that let them develop power capability without a weapons threat.
Olga:
Do the Iranian ayatollahs fund terrorist groups? Most evidence says yes. Most thinking people are aware that Ahmadenijad is a mouthpiece and doesn't run the country. But their elections have been of the type that allows voting for any of the candidates the ayatollahs allow to stand.
Right now, other nations can, with justification, accuse the pot of calling the kettle black.
I certainly don't disagree that our CIA has done some nasty things. It was not my point here to say otherwise or to defend that, just as you, I'm sure, are not trying to justify the ayatollahs' support for suicide bombing or beheading bound prisoners with a saw.
But do our past bad actions remove totally our obligation to try to prevent Iran from getting nuclear weapons? Does our checkered past make it any less likely that the ayatollahs would attempt to give them to terrorists?
In fact, they would likely be MORE assiduous than many in preventing it, knowing there are several factions just aching for the insinuation of their complicity, factions that would be pushing for retaliation on the suspicion, even if terrorists got their bombs another way.
In today's world, I don't think the US could get away with Hiroshima; too many other countries have nuclear weapons. The leaders of Iran would have to be abyssmally stupid not to realize this. However, with militant enemies in the area, nearly surrounding them (many with nuclear capabilities), I can understand they're feeling like they would less at risk if they had nuclear weapons. I don't know whether it's true, but I don't feel like we, in this country, are objective enough, wise enough, sage enough, to decide who can be trusted with these weapons and who can't. To any outsider, and people like myself, US' nuclear policies seem entirely self-serving (allies can have them, but no one else).
Unless we are all willing to give them up, I don't think we have the right to tell any other country they can't have them for the same reason we can have them. To many countries, including Iran, we don't look less militant or more humanitarian. After all, while most of the world has eschewed incendiary bombs and landmines, we have not. Why should our judgement outweigh theirs?
Like the US and the old Soviet Union, Iran and Israel will probably find that the idea of mutual destruction is the best way to prevent the Middle East from disappearing in a mushroom cloud.
I am not sure that "mutually assured destruction" works with Islamist fanatics.
If they can strap conventional explosives around their waists, what makes you think they wouldn't be happy to do the same with a nuke?
The terrorists are unlikely to get sufficient nuclear weapons to wipe whole countries off the map. But one dirty bomb might just get themselves wiped off the map. That's difference than losing a handful of fanatical henchmen.
One little dirty bomb detonated in New York City or Washington DC or Chicago or LA...
And how would we...could we...respond? The terrorists on 9-11-2001 came from many countries, but primarily from Saudi Arabia, a supposed ally.
How do you wipe that group of terrorists off the map? Do you nuke Saudi Arabia?
A regular nuke leaves residue that can be traced. This is not true for a dirty bomb.
Here is a web site that describes how a dirty bomb is made.
As you will see if you follow this link, radioactive materials for a dirty bomb can come from all kinds of sources...hospitals, research facilities and industry. Although these materials are controlled by the NRC in this country, they are not well-controlled in other countries, and could not be traced in any event.
If they say Iran has scrapped its nuke program the right wing says they're idiots; if they say yep, Iran's building nukes, the left says ah, BS.
What we need is to quit calling their president an idiot (we've got one too) and start discussing how Iran can get nuclear power without getting nuclear weapons as well. A start is to acknowledge that exporting their oil and producing domestic electricity by some other means makes complete economic sense.
However, Iran's been a long-time supporter of Hezbollah (and probably other terrorists as well.
Plus, there are ways of making dangerous isotopes that don't require nuclear reactors.
You were the one who brought it up, Stephanie.
My grandmother...and mother, too! They both feel so sorry for those poor, old people in the nursing home!
The retirement apartments are "the easy life". I hope your mom can find one that is not about coasting...but about speeding up like my mom did!
"I was under the opinion that one should commit a crime before inflicting punishment. A "speculated" bomb (that I maintain is highly unlikely) should not dictate our actions."
You were under the wrong impression then, Stephanie.
When you're dealing in a very serious international topic like Iran and their acquisition of nuclear material, you have to go with the history we have on-hand. Iran has been a rogue state that has helped terrorists since it's inception in 1979, and has destabilized the whole region with its awful behavior. Why would you or anyone else EVER trust them to do something above-board?
Let's act conservatively and cut them off at the knees. If we make a mistake we can always say we're sorry later.
Yeah, and North Korea too. Let's blast them. And Libya? Well, Kadafi seems to be repenting his terrorist past. Maybe we should only nuke PART of Libya.
How about Pakistan? Even though the government is nominally pro-US, the rest of the country hates us and would love to nuke us. And then there is Saudi Arabia. Most of the people involved in the WTC attacks were from there, so we should definitely nuke them...oh, wait a minute...we need their oil.
When you start talking about taking out nations because you THINK they might do something bad, the possibilities are endless...for endless war, that is, and maybe terminal poisoning of the earth's ecosphere. But that wouldn't concern us, because if we start taking out nations that disagree with us, the rest of the nations in the world will be forced to take US out! We will be the real threat to the future of mankind.
We bombed Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Using your logic, why should we be trusted with a nuclear weapon? Have we said we're sorry for Iraq even though that was desperately bungled? And, if we did, what would that accomplish?
We haven't the clean hands necessary to throw stones. We can't "cut them off at the knees," as Bert rightly points out, just because we don't think we can trust them. There's a whole lot out there that feel (and our recent actions can hardly allay those fears) that we are not to be trusted. I suppose you wouldn't feel the same if sanctions were taken against us. Or is it OK for us because we're already powerful?
Rules and justice should be applied equably. After all, no one nation is "all-powerful" forever. The thinking your propose is the same sort of thinking that brought Napolean and Hitler down, that destroyed huge empires. History is there to learn from.
Let's just keep Iran from acquiring nukes for now, OK?
We can worry about the rest of the world as they get closer to acquisition.
Libya, terrified over what we'd done to Iraq in the initial days of the invasion, voluntarily gave up their nuclear weapons program. We didn't have to fire one shot at them over it. Pure fear was all it took. The UN has been dismantling their program since late 2003. Good news for us!
I read Truman's biography (a good read) and in his own words he said that he feared losing 500,000 more American soldiers (military estimates at the time) invading the Japanese home islands...........and this was after years and years of World War. America was weary of war and looking for a quick and dirty end to WWII. We dropped nukes on Japan after war had been declared. No illegalities there. What we did was vicious, however. We killed 190,000 in 2 blinks of an eye.
Was it better than our troops absorbing the potential 500,000 deaths to subdue Japan? Probably.
And Stephanie, before we invented nukes there was no such weapon, and therefore no rules to their usage. Only after we used them were rules invented. Remember, we had nukes for years before anyone else. In seeing how destructive they were, we realized we had to regulate and restrict their use. That's why we're the perfect ones to speak on this issue - because we invented the whole idea.